Toilet Humor

Ok, maybe this post isn't humorous, but it is about toilets.

There has been a media campaign going on in the Cleveland area that has to do with flushing old and outdated medication down your toilets.

As far back as I can remember, whenever you wanted to get rid of any meds, you were to flush them down the toilet. Any antibiotics that you didn't finish like you should have, or aspirin that was out of date, or anti inflammatories that made you sick to your stomach. Flush them. That way, no one gets their hands on things they shouldn't have their hands on. Every year or so when I go through my medicine cabinet, I flush all outdated cough syrup, allergy tabs, aspirin, whatever.

This media campaign is now warning people not to flush these meds down the toilet. Instead, we are to throw them in the garbage. The radio commercials suggest putting any pills in with your worst garbage, and then mixing them with coffee grounds or something before putting them out. But, don't flush them as they are going through the waste treatment plants and not getting filtered out and they are contaminating our water.

Yeah, go back and read that last paragraph again. The first time I heard this on the radio, it didn't really sink in. But this morning, it hit me like a brick right between the eyes.

In my years on this earth I can honestly say that I've never thought much about what happens to our bodily wastes once the toilet is flushed. As long as it's not in my bowl any longer, I guess it's not my problem. Or so I thought. I just took for granted that when I turned on the kitchen faucet to get a drink of water, that's what I was drinking. Nice, fresh, cold, clean water. How wrong I was. Our water is being contaminated with everyone's flushed drugs among whatever else they are not filtering out.

Now that I start to think about this subject, it's kind of hard to stop. I mean, what happens to the family goldfish or parakeet that is flushed? What about just plain old human waste? If the water treatment plants can't filter out some Sudafed or Percodan, or birth control are they really filtering out fecal matter or Tweety? O M G. One thing I haven't previously been afraid of is my drinking water.

So now they are saying that they can't filter out all these meds. Is this scaring the crap out of anybody besides me?

Well, I did do a little research. According to some of the websites I've looked at like this one and this one, the danger is to the waterways that inevitably are the recipients of the flushed water after it has gone through the waste treatment plants. Recent studies in Michigan and elsewhere have found levels of antidepressants, birth control and heart medications to name a few, in the Grand River near Grand Rapids and the Huron River near Ann Arbor.

Scientists have found Prozac harming mussels in the Ohio Rivers and drugs feminizing male fish in the Potomac River in Washington DC.

I'm telling you, this has been so eye opening. I have really put forth a concerted effort to diminish my carbon footprint on this earth. I am attempting to learn what I can and going "green". Recycling is huge in our house as is stopping vampire electricity to name just a few measures we've undertaken. Now I feel no matter what we do, it's not enough and we're still killing ourselves.

As frightening as it is that our fish and wildlife are being affected by what has been flushed down our toilets, it is even more terrifying that scientists also found "extremely tiny" concentrations of Ibuprofen in treated drinking water in Ann Arbor. WHAT? I'd like to know what these scientists consider "extremely tiny". I can't imagine that any level is acceptable. And, that's just one drug they are mentioning. How many more are there?

It's really true: the very air we breathe is killing us. If the air doesn't get us, the water will.